The inclusion of Artificial Intelligence technology in e-Commerce has gone beyond the customary chat-bots that we see today. AI is expected to reduce the dependency of e-Commerce on sales reps to as much as 80%. This means AI is expected to play bigger roles in deciding who emerges on top in the e-Commerce arena. So what lies beyond chat-bots for AI-empowered e-Commerce?
- More effective personalization: AI can help in creating dynamic, self-modifying personalized screens. These screens arrange themselves based on the information from the users visiting the pages. The screens can also predict the behavior of the buyer and better their own layout and orientation.
- AI powered CRM: Customer Relationship Management (CRM) continues to be a vital part in nurturing that ever-important relationship in any business. AI can help e-Commerce in having a CRM that intelligently scores and ranks customers. There can be algorithms to systematically trigger new campaigns or open new communication channels upon certain scores and ranks.
- AI Shopping Assistants: One of the reasons people may still prefer physical shopping centers is the availability of assistants who can guide the shopper and formulate a good (or bad) shopping experience. AI can power up a shopping assistant that suggests products smartly, suggests sizes, times of repeat purchases, top-ups, coupons and the like. The future is already being seen with devices like Alexa.
- Decode search and make it better: Semantic search has always interested folks involved in natural language processing. AI can help make search more effective. Instead of searching for ‘diamond jewelry’ there could be search for, ‘what is a good gift for my wife on our anniversary’.
- Push more genuine stuff (both products and reviews): AI can help your platform decide quicker if a review is fake. If a review has multiple links to be clicked and ‘looks’ like spam, an algorithm can know that. It can also learn the pattern of fake reviews to flag regular spam posters. It can also determine the language of the writer to see if the review is written to be intentionally funny or sarcastic and doesn’t really make for a product review. AI can also shield your customers from shady sellers and fake products by analyzing the product images and getting more information about the products meta-information.
AI is definitely here to stay and revolutionize e-Commerce. While Facebook sharpens its advertising and offers social media commerce through its AI and Amazon continues its innovation on offerings like Alexa, it is up to you to decide the level of adoption of AI for your e-Commerce business.